Ole Miss undoes 1962 censure of former B'ville resident

The arrival of James Meredith, a 29 year-old black man, to
integrate The University of Mississippi in 1962 sparked several
days of student riots that resulted in two deaths and turned the
university known as one of the nation's top journalism schools into
a national news event itself.

The editor of the Oxford, Miss., campus newspaper at that time,
Sidna Brower, urged her fellow students to stop their violence
because, she wrote in an editorial published in the Daily
Mississippian on Oct. 1, 1962, they were "bringing dishonor and
shame upon the university and the state of Mississippi."

Southerners are known for placing value on honor and good
conduct, but in an action that reflected the tumultous times, the
student senate of the university censured Brower, now Sidna Brower
Mitchell and a former co-owner and editor of The
Citizen who lived in Bernardsville for many years, in a
Dec. 4, 1962 vote.

The resolution censuring her stated she "failed in time of grave
crisis to represent and uphold the rights of her fellow
students."

On Tuesday, Sept. 24, as the university prepared to mark the
40th anniversary of that defining moment for the civil rights
movement and for the school on Sept. 30 and Oct.1, the Associated
Student Body senate of the university unanimously voted to repeal
the censure and Mitchell was to be honored.

"It really touched me deeply," said Mitchell last week after
receiving an e-mail on Wednesday, Sept. 25, notifying her of the
action. "Because (the censure) was really pretty traumatic. I found
out who my friends were and I found out that people I thought were
my friends really weren't."

The process of being brought in front of the senate also was
difficult.

In fact, while Mitchell was commended by The New York Times for
her editorial written on the first day of the riots, and while she
received a number of job offers; it was actually the censure action
that brought her lots of national media attention, she said.

She was nominated for The Pulitzer Prize, named one of
Mademoiselle magazine's 10 most outstanding women and asked to
write a piece for The Nation, she said, as well as receiving more
job offers.

"First they tried to censor me," Mitchell recalled of the senate
proceeding. "And when they found out they couldn't do that, they
decided to do the censure. People tried to tell them that doing it
would reflect badly on the university."

However, the senate members went ahead.

"It took them three hours to decide to let the national media
in. All the major networks who were there with TV cameras," said
Mitchell.

She said she was accused of not printing letters to the editor
fairly because, the senators reasoned, she must have gotten a lot
more opposing her views than she ran in the paper.

"I told them I tried to run a representative number," said
Mitchell. "They wanted to see them."

Because she did not really have a secure office in the offices
of the campus newspaper, but just an alcove, she had taken the
letters home.

"I had to drive home to Memphis and pick them up - there were
three garbage bags full of them - and make it back to campus by 11
p.m., which is when the girls had to be in in those days," she
recalled with a laugh. "I often wonder how I was able to get a
newspaper out."

Mitchell recalled she did not think it would help any if she
were to take a position on integration, but thought she could
appeal to the respectful nature of her fellow Southerners in
calling for an end to the violence that brought thousands of
federal marshals onto the campus.

For her stand, Mitchell was labeled "the Pink Princess" by the
anonymous authors of the "The Rebel Underground," an underground
mimeographed newsletter that campaigned for her removal as editor
of the newspaper. There also was a petition drive seeking her
removal.

Getting the newspaper out was a struggle because people kept
stealing bundles of the papers from around the campus.

Mitchell was advised by the dean of women at the campus not to
meet with Meredith and she never did meet him. University officials
were upset because the student paper was not recording "the
official version of events."

Mitchell was born in Memphis, Tenn. Back home, her father, Rex,
had just started a dairy business. She remembered worrying that she
would cause problems for her father.

"He told me not to worry about it, to write what was in my
heart," she recalled of her dad. "My daddy brought me up that it is
not the color of your skin or how much money you have or where you
live, but who you are as an individual that is important," she
said.

As it turned out, her father's business was not affected and he
even got a number of nice notes from his customers.

On campus, matters were much more intense. Mitchell, who was a
senior and a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, remembered
having to clear three security checkpoints manned by National
Guardsman to get from the journalism building back to her dorm.

Hall Of Fame Honor

Sen. Trent Lott was one of her classmates and they were inducted
into the university's Hall of Fame together in January of 1963.
Mitchell, attending the university on a journalism scholarship, was
just the second woman to edit the paper, which had a staff of 20.
The first woman to edit the paper did so during World War II when
many young men were serving in the Armed Forces.

Mitchell recalled seeing media manipulation up close. "Someone
from the media would say, 'I have 50 feet of film to shoot, do
something,'" she remembered. "I know that's when some idiot climbed
up the flagpole and tried to take down the American flag."

Mitchell recalled she was in the darkroom showing a
photojournalist where all the materials were and standing by as he
developed his film when a staff member of the Mississippian knocked
on the door.

"We said we were in the middle of processing, but he said it was
urgent," she said. "We buried his photos under some old photo paper
and opened the door. He told us a French correspondent had been
shot and the photographer said, 'That's my man.' He had been
assigned to him to take pictures. That shook me up."

He was "supposedly shot at close range in the back," Mitchell
remembered.

The other fatality was a construction worker who was perched on
a beam where a new chemistry building was under construction
watching the action when he fell to his death.

Mitchell was to address the current staff of the Daily
Mississippian and also a journalism class when she participated in
events marking the anniversary of Meredith's enrollment Sept. 30 to
Oct. 1.

She has made other trips back to the south and to Ole Miss.

"The roads are not the same," she said of Oxford. "There is no
circle around the Lyceum, which was where the federal marshals
were. There are a lot of new modern buildings. The old journalism
building was bulldozed and a new one was put in its place."

In fact, she acknowledged there are "probably a lot of people
who don't even know about 1962," and that's OK with her, "as long
as they're open minded."

With the benefit of distance, Mitchell looked back on that time
and said, "I think the irony is I saw more prejudice, I mean real
prejudice in New York."

After graduation, she took a job at the now defunct New York
World & Telegram and later worked for UPI in London before
going into public relations.

"In New York, people talked about how they didn't like Jews or
Catholics or Italians or whatever. People really tend to get along
in the south," she said.

She said she believes the civil rights changes would have
occurred no matter what, but some people tried to use the upheaval
to further their own political aspirations. Most southerners did
not like feeling that the federal government was forcing the issue
in the ways it did.

"It took somebody with real guts and fortitude to walk into that
situation," she said of Meredith. She said some people felt his age
was a detriment, that it should have been a young black female
because southern chivalry would take over and the young woman would
not be subjected to slurs and other abuse. She doesn't know if that
would have made a difference.

"Ole Miss was part of a larger history," Mitchell said. "There
was the high school at Little Rock; Alabama; Clemson. I think they
were probably better prepared because they had administrators and
student leaders who really planned to cut off any
demonstrations."

Mitchell now lives in Monroe Township and still writes a weekly
cooking column for The Citizen.

She and her husband, George Mitchell, bought The
Citizen in 1973. The couple settled in Bernardsville and
have one grown daughter.

She worked as director of public relations for the former
Riverside Hospital, which is now Saint Clare's Hospital in Boonton
Township. Later, Mitchell was one of the original employees of the
state Council of Affordable Housing (COAH), moving up from director
of communications to deputy director before retiring in 2001 after
16 years.

She now works as a housing and public relations consultant.

In Bernardsville, Mitchell, a Republican, was chairman of the
Republican County Committee in Bernardsville. She also was
president of the Board of Trustees of the library and was Sunday
School director and an elder at the Basking Ridge Presbyterian
Church.

She and her husband now spend much of their time traveling and
have taken many trips south.

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